Climate Change Bollywood ishtyle August 7, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Culture, Design, Everything 2.0, Globalisation, Innovation, Leadership Innovation, Nature, Politics, Sustainability, climate change, kleptocracy.Tags: An Inconvenient Truth, Brand India, Capitalism, climate change, demise of capitalism, Ethics, Greed, India, India and China, Kyoto Protocol, Materialism, Sustainable retreat, Thought leadership, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United States, Western Thought
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Let’s use the standard Hindi movie formula of circa 1980 to script our earth’s climate story. Enter Superstar US. The virtuous, street smart, Robin Hood inspired protagonist of our story, replete with his coterie of jazz dancers. And then there’s the poor guy, India. Always trying to emulate the “hero” and competing with him for the “herione’s” attention in college settings. Let’s throw in some masala – subplots, love triangles and the very popular song and dance sequences – with the extras doing their own thing while they dance in the third row.
Quick Gun Murugan
Now compare this with whatever we’ve been seeing in the Climate Change discussions. See the script accurately playing itself out? (Nobody seems to want to ask mother Earth for her point of view). Call it clairvoyance or just plain sensitivity, some of us have been seeing it coming since the mid nineties. Even we couldn’t have guessed the speed of deterioration, although fully knowing the bounty hunter tendencies of the US, we should have been able to. Easily. Shame on us!
Some simple facts from Prem Shankar Jha’s Tehelka article, An Earth On Edge.
1. Till as recently as five years ago, abrupt climate change was on the unthinkable fringe of possibilities predicted by climate scientists. In March 2009, 2,500 scientists from 80 countries assembled at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The congress concluded that the findings of the IPCC were out of date. The evidence collected since its fourth report was compiled showed that global warming was ceasing to be human-induced and was becoming self-reinforcing. (more…)
Leadership Innovation – Crisis of aspiration December 26, 2008
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Culture, Everything 2.0, Innovation, Innovation 101, Leadership, Perception.Tags: Arun Maira, BCG, empathy, Ethics, Fairplay, India, Innovation, Innovation and Idea Management, Leadership, Next Practices, Thought leadership, wisdom
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Today’s Economic Times carries an article (How to manage through a crisis) by Arun Maira. My highlights in colour below …
- Arun Maira, Senior Advisor – BCG India.
The difficulty is in determining what should be cut-back to get through the immediate crisis with least effect on the future prospects of the business. While Telco was in the midst of a large
capital expenditure program to expand its design and production facilities in Pune in the early 1980s the truck market went into recession. Finances became tight. The board had to consider whether to reduce the bonus to employees or reduce dividends to shareholders. One view was that since the company could not disappoint investors whose support it needed through the crisis, dividends must be maintained and cuts made elsewhere — in the bonuses and benefits of employees perhaps. An opposing view was that the company needed the dedication of its employees more than ever in tough times and hence the company could not afford to demoralise them.The lesson was that, in a crisis, the company must retain the support of all its stakeholders. (more…)
